Monthly Archives: April 2012

Eggz

Posted on by February 25, 2020

It started with the colors

But things got silly fast

for Sam, anyway.

Caroline was into the eggs at a much deeper level

She really considered what colors to use

and took great pride in her results;

especially when she realized I’d put her name on one of her eggs.

Sam was pretty thrilled when he saw his first eggs come out.

 

But on the whole, he was more interested in dumping colors together and dying himself mushy blue.

In the end, they both had an eggsellent time.

Right up until Sam melted down for four hours when the project was over.… Read the rest

Gossip

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Skip to the backstory

“That girl’s got to find herself a man.” Doreen, DoDo to all but a few of the newest nurses, stabbed her finger at Jennifer Anniston.

“I think she’s got somebody, hasn’t she?” asked Wilma. The women maintained an easy friendship based on their shared love of celebrity gossip. They watched the all the shows about movie stars’ lives, and they collected magazines so they could compare nose jobs, boob jobs, and lovers.

DoDo said, “She needs one that’ll stick.”

The afternoon nurse, Audrey, swept into the room.“That rag’s a week old,” said Audrey after she administered the appropriate pills.… Read the rest

My Brother On The Mound

Posted on by February 25, 2020

“Hot pretzel and a package of candy,” says the woman in pink. She has a glazed look, like she’s been standing in line for a thousand years.

“Six fifty.”

She gives me a credit card, and I go for the pretzel. We’re shorthanded, so I’m my own runner.

“Get me one,” Brady calls from his register.

“The syrup’s out in the diet cola,” Kelly shouts.

Their voices blend together with the clanging, whirring, and popping that is a ballpark concession stand. The PTA gets funds, Minor League baseball gets good neighbor points, and I get a headache. I can’t hear the score over the cacophony.… Read the rest

Fiction: Sometimes a memory

Posted on by February 25, 2020

We drove over five hundred miles to see the house where Mama was born.  “I’m sure someone else lives there by now,” Ainsley said.

“You’re an optimist, Sis,” I told her.  Mama and her parents abandoned the old place in the fifties, just walked away after the wreck. Even though it happened fifteen years before Ainsley was born (seventeen years before me), that wreck dominated the landscape of our childhood.

Granddaddy drove an Edsel in the days before they invented good taste. Mama said he loved that ugly old thing, but she and her brother thought the vertical grille looked like a sour faced aunt puckering up to kiss them the worst hello ever.… Read the rest

Friday Fluff April 6, 2012

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Hoppy Friday y’all. (I get to say things like that until Sunday. Aren’t you glad?) Easter is one of those middle of the road holidays for me. I’m not Christian, so I don’t go in for He Is Risen. But I don’t mind eggs. Much. And I loved egg hunts as a kid. (Not public ones. Never public ones.) And I never resented the Easter Bunny the way I did Santa Claus. (Why? Who fucking knows. But the red man and I got issues going way back.)  Anyway, tonight, I’m whipping out the dye and newspaper, and I’ll get you wacky eggz shotz tomorrow.… Read the rest

Wolf’s need

Posted on by February 25, 2020

Three days after Mrs. Carmody brought us the silver bullets, a man missing his right hand came to the door. Daddy looked out for a long time, like he didn’t see the person right in front of his eyes. The man leaned in against the jamb and shook, though the weather  was fair. Everything about him was mud brown except that arm. It was swollen and purple from the wrist to almost the elbow. He held it out to Daddy and said, “Please?”

Daddy didn’t move. “That your hand Annie Carmody found in her wolf trap?”

The man nodded, though it was at first hard to tell that apart from his quaking.… Read the rest

Game of Herb

Posted on by February 25, 2020

I was six and Jenny was five. It was our first year in different schools, and I hated being apart from her every day. So we spent our weekends together. One night, she informed me she had met a ghost. His name was Herb, and he lived in my house. Herb communicated with us via the First McGuffey Reader. Yes, that McGuffey Reader. My mother had scads of old books, and Jenny and I were precocious.

I’ll never forget the hard brown cover or the black ink picture of children sitting under a leafy bower. Paging through the text, we would recognize words that felt out of kilter and interpret Herb’s instructions to us.… Read the rest

The brain is down

Posted on by February 25, 2020

“What the hell is everybody doing in here?”

Mandy, the union representative, shifted comfortably in a break room chair. She studied her manager. There was an empty seat beside her. She gestured to it, inviting the manager to sit. He did not. “The brain is down,” she said. “Nobody can clock in.”

“So take a roll and we’ll clock everybody in manually when IT gets the brain back up.”

She shook her head. She articulated the ‘o’ in her, “No” with extra wide lips.

“What did you say to me?”

“The last time this happened, HR refused to validate the hand signed timesheets and it was an entire pay cycle before they got it straight.… Read the rest

Got much spam in it?

Posted on by February 25, 2020

If you blog on WordPress (.com or .org) you almost certainly use Askimet to help manage your spam queue. When I changed over from the WordPress hosted .com account to the self hosted .org software, the amount of spam in that queue shot through the stratosphere. Seriously. On my .com account, I had maybe five or ten comments a day get caught in the Askimet strainer. Now? If I don’t clear that thing every eight hours, it’s into the triple digits.

But Askimet isn’t perfect. It will very rarely (exactly once since I migrated a month ago) let spam sneak in.… Read the rest

Character Assassination Carousel: Tootle

Posted on by February 27, 2020

Today, I am to taking a ride on Ninja Mom’s Character Assassination Carousel.  That means I get to take aim at a popular children’s book and fire arrows until it falls bleeding to the ground. I’m walking in some elite company here. The last character assassin, Mommy Shorts decimated Dr. Seuss’s Oh The Places You’ll Go. And the month before that, Cynicism 101 clicked Dorothy’s heels right back home and unseated The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from his throne.  The next rider is Robyn at Hollow Tree Ventures. If you’d like to grab a horse, get in touch with Ninja Mom over on her blog.… Read the rest